My Life Should Be a Sitcom

After three months of training, I have moved from Barranquilla to my permanent site placement in Cartagena! “Golden Girls: Colombian remake” take one; my life as a sitcom has commenced! Life with the cohort of Colombian women commenced as I arrived to my new front porch filled with ten ladies peeling potatoes. Turned out to be a birthday, and therefore instead of unpacking I met about 30 family members and friends while eating my bowl of vegetable and cow stomach soup (sopa de mondongo) and cake.

 

I’ve mentioned my new host family but let me reiterate because it’s just too good… I will be living with three old ladies: Aura (the youngin, in her 50s or 60s) and her two aunts, Celia (81) and Edith (73). The two aunts wear nothing but nightgowns; I might have to purchase one for myself to fit in. Pastimes include: watching soap operas and the Price is Right, cooking, sitting around talking, giving me life advise. But the fun doesn’t end there folks… they have here for the past 50 years, and, house by house, the family is taking over the neighborhood. Next door lives another aunt in her 70s along and a sister and her family while two more sisters live down the road. Coming from a family of four with no relatives in the same state, I have to admit I’m a bit jealous. It’s my like childhood summer vacations in New Hampshire all year long here.

This overabundance of estrogen and people may sound overwhelming and I do miss my family in Barranquilla, but the reality is I’m very comfortable and have much more independence. This house is much more spacious (6 bedrooms, a huge front porch and back patio complete with a GIGANTIC mango tree, my room size tripled and I have my own bathroom attached). If I close my door I am never disturbed and I can come and go and generally do as I please. Nonetheless, maybe most exciting is the change in diet, HALEYLOOYA!… this time around I approached the subject very differently, saying that I’ve had a really hard time with the endless fried food and rice, using positive reinforcement by excessively praising any vegetables that appears on my plate, and pleading please NO bollo limpio (corn meal that is extra processed so all color and nutrition is taken out, leaving behind only the taste of cardboard). We’ve arranged that they will cook me lunch (and they are fantastic cooks; even made the cow stomach soup delicious), will buy me stuff for breakfast and I am in charge of my own dinner. I about cried the first morning when, low and behold, instead of a fried aprepa with salty cheese, papaya and a hard-boiled egg awaited me. Unfortunately I bought a six bag pack of milk (yes, milk comes in bags and is not refrigerated), and only after opening the first bag found out that instead of skim I had bought a two months’ supply of whole milk… guess that makes up for the lack of fried food. I do have to boil my drinking water, but I guess that’s the Peace Corps experience coming through.